TGs vs. Forts

[Hallo]

geln0r, I've long ago made a (private) spreadsheet for this and pointed out that the "ideal ratio" is very fluctuant and without factors such as BE Sci, Population Mods, %Land to allocate, Def Spec Value... people cannot give appropriate values. I've even pointed out that Homes CAN be more effective than TG's / Forts, but people have all sorts of reasons for not liking that.
And you're not even factoring Offense / NW yet.


In short; people seem to prefer not to actually think about the game and just play it.


On another note: While mixing TG's and Forts is "okay", do realize that you'll have unbuilt acres for most of the war (Including buildings in progress) and that if you're DEPENDING on Forts for your defense, that you'll rapidly lose your DME while growing. On the other hand, you could just phase out the Forts and go pure TG's while in war (:

[hydroxon]

geln0r, I've long ago made a (private) spreadsheet for this and pointed out that the "ideal ratio" is very fluctuant and without factors such as BE Sci, Population Mods, %Land to allocate, Def Spec Value... people cannot give appropriate values. I've even pointed out that Homes CAN be more effective than TG's / Forts, but people have all sorts of reasons for not liking that.
And you're not even factoring Offense / NW yet.


In short; people seem to prefer not to actually think about the game and just play it.

I made a private spreadsheet for this too! It takes into account all the variables that you mentioned, and shows me the optimal TG/Forts ratio haha. I'm glad to find that someone else also uses a similar approach :D


PS. Realest's analysis is totally right! Some of us (me included) just derive too much fun from the number-crunching haha.

[hint]

TGs vs Forts calculations are fun and give forts a lot more credit than they usually get from most players. I know since I've done them myself as well.
But truth is tho, that all these calculations would be only about a static province.

In real war or conflict forts are a lot weaker than on paper because of strategic reasons like NS/NM/MS doing more damage to your defense(what is the main reason first 2 would be used anyway) because your defensive units are modded with forts effect, so loss of them drops your overall defense a lot faster. (Although that issue doesn't apply too often nowadays as most provinces doing the NS usually have more than enough thieves for max effect op)

Also when preparing chain target and dropping his defense, if that target has forts, there will be direct op available for you to do that very effectively in burning forts.

Not to mention kds have often set sure dpa numbers for their provinces and they would rather keeping that defense more than keeping some fixed opa number, so loss of defense due to barren acres(unbuilt forts) is usually worse than offense(unbuilt TGs).

Also for chained provinces, if they have a lot of forts, it means a lot of their buildings have become next to worthless, because most of your ds will be gone and those forts are left with very little of what to modify.

[Danrelle]

"In real war or conflict forts are a lot weaker than on paper because of strategic reasons like NS/NM/MS doing more damage to your defense(what is the main reason first 2 would be used anyway) because your defensive units are modded with forts effect, so loss of them drops your overall defense a lot faster."

The above mentioned ways to lose defense work based on percentages. That means, if I have less troops home, the NS/NM/MS would also kill less troops. So the argument that my def drops faster fails.

You do have a very good second point, about dropping def by burning Forts. I wonder how good your BE and your Forts% would have to be for Burning Forts to be more efficient at dropping mod def than NS, for example.

The third argument:
"Not to mention kds have often set sure dpa numbers for their provinces and they would rather keeping that defense more than keeping some fixed opa number, so loss of defense due to barren acres(unbuilt forts) is usually worse than offense(unbuilt TGs)."

It's no secret that both dpa and opa drop in Wars. The only mechanism to keep them up is to build more Forts/TGs and to train. My point is, having Forts, I have the option to increase my def faster by training. Since every dspec adds more def points with the Forts mod on.
To give an extreme example, for an Elf with Forts it's much more advantageous to train dspecs in War, if you're looking only at points/gcs you're buying.

[hint]

I realized the weakness in my first point, hence i edited it little later on, but you missed it as you posted soon after that. But that point is still valid against very big provs where you can't send enough for max kills though or few other rare occasions. As matter of fact only a few days ago my province got constantly NSed for days by provinces 5-15% my size(I'm considerably larger than anyone else in my kd) and the kills were no where near the max, even tho i'm sure they sent all their thieves on me. But yes these are rare occasions and not a very strong argument.

Burning forts is usually worth it over NS if target has over 10% forts, if i remember correctly it also easyer op of the 2. Has been many years since i've used that on kd level, mostly since no opponent has never run highish forts, but I remember it being very effective last time when we used in age 37. Enemy had loads of bigs on 20%+ forts at start, couldn't have done it without burn forts.

Your own argument gets neutralized because you can also train OS in war, with TGs they would also be stronger than the usual 5/0.

Btw overall I do actually agree that forts have a little undeserved status as a useless war building and they can be quite worth it, I'm just trying to point out that static calculations for optimal ratios can be deceptive as they often don't reflect the situation when the province is in movement(war, strategies etc). I think I'm missing some good argument here, it's been a while since i've thought of TGs vs forts issue.

[Bishop]

Burn forts is gone - what you have instead on rogues is Greater Arson which you can target at a specific building.

[hint]

Same principle, different name :P

[Danrelle]

Nice chatting with you hint. Thanks for the post.

I just want to state smthg, a little unrelated to the topic and without any relation to previous posts.
That ppl should not say smthg like "dynamical arguments are hard to make and static arguments are fail". Then become satisfied with their analysis and imagine themselves justified to tell everyone to stop thinking about it.

It is possible to figure out what will happen to your province dynamically, including effects of ops and land fluctuations. Just not mathematically rigurous. But you can discuss trends and effect of buildings in a dynamical way.

For Forts, one dynamical argument in their favor is that it makes every new dspec you buy in War more worth it. For TGs, they make ospecs more worth it. It just depends what you forsee you'll need to train more in War, dspecs or ospecs. In my opinion, if you're growing in war, you'll want more dpsecs, if you're being chained, you'll want more ospecs. (because when you're chained you have less to protect and also GBP to help you) Now, if one understands that the big provinces win wars, then one can also understand that def wins wars. But the last sentence is up for debate and I don't want to defend it right now. Just from previous arguments it should be clear when you want to favor TGs and when Forts. Reading all we've discussed and still saying that one is hands down great and the other is just rubbish...

(by the way, now that we're talking about it, burning TGs to kill mod off might be a good strategy as well)

[Bishop]

Same principle, different name :P

wasn't BF available to all though?

[DHaran]

wasn't BF available to all though?

Yep.

[hint]

I agree with most of stuff you said and give up on this issue for now, because I can't recall all the 'behind the scenes' arguments that go against forts that few years ago made me look skeptical towards the optimal static situation ratio calculations. Maybe I'll look into again some time in future when I get time or need to decide between the 2 again.

Regarding that OT suggestion about burning TGs with GA, I think you are in the wrong here and no way it can be a good strategy. With burning forts or GS, the reason behind it is that attacks will follow. Those attacks will then remove the target province from the effective NW gains range and also severely damage the target province offense and defense. Burning Tgs wouldn't accomplish neither, at best enemy could maybe be forced to 1x 'the target' 1x 'spare target' instead 2x 'the target', but for overall war strategical picture it achieves nothing since target still keeps all his acres, armies and nearly all of it's nw. Plus he can rebuild the TGs.

[Bishop]

Main argument about forts is 1) they don't make you unbreakable so why devote land to them and 2) are not useful when chained. If you are sure you wont get hit then optimising using them is useful.

[Danrelle]

About 2) : bishop, no one can be sure they won't be targeted, unless they start as uber UBs.. and they don't need Forts there anyway. The point is, if my build makes it such that it's not profitable for the other KD to chain me, rather than others, I would want Forts and good wpa to protect land and amassed peasants.

About 1) : that's just silly. I'll say it again. Forts are intended to allow you to increase your mod off, not your def.

[Bishop]

i'm not getting intro this again - it should suffice to say i see 0 attackers in good kds running forts.

[hydroxon]

Hey Danrelle, technically, Forts are intended to increase your overall mod off + mod def, i.e. strengthen your military as a whole :P

And I'm not sure where Bishop gets those ideas from :(